


If At First You Don't Succeed, Try Again?

by nepenthe_writer



Series: WinterIron Bingo [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Prison Escape, Protective Bucky Barnes, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 05:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20541044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nepenthe_writer/pseuds/nepenthe_writer
Summary: An enemy from Tony's past comes back to haunt him





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Square: I4 - Not Dead Bad Guy for the WinterIron Bingo

Meals were a time for the Avengers to come together when they were all in the tower and not otherwise occupied. This evening was no exception. Work was either done or could wait for a while. No one was currently trying to take over the world. All in all it was a relaxing evening.

By majority vote it was decided that the meal for the night would consist of pizza though somehow Bruce had managed to talk them all into making homemade pizza instead of ordering out. There had been some grumbling at first about the amount of time that it would take but now with flour covering most surfaces and the smell of pizza filling the common floor as it baked in the oven, there were no complaints to be had.

While they waited for the pizza to finish cooking they turned on the news to see what was happening out in the world. Clint and Tony joked about not wanting to hear what was on fire now but they knew the importance of having information just like the rest of them did.

A story about the recent dog show being held in Central Park ended and a breaking news banner flashed across the top of the screen.

“In other news, the former CEO of Hammer Tech Industries, Juston Hammer, has escaped from police custody where he was being held on counts of corporate espionage and public endangerment,” the news anchor announced, looking directly into the camera. “Police say that there was a glitch in the security systems that inexplicably released the locks in the area Mr. Hammer was in. The resulting chaos allowed Mr. Hammer to make his escape. Police are looking into the incident to prevent further security breaches and urge the public to come forward with any information about Mr. Hammer’s whereabouts.”

Everyone was quiet as they stared at the television screen while the evening news continued. It wasn’t an alien invasion or anything world threatening but it had rocked them all the same. This was something that could threatened one of their own and they all took that extremely seriously.

“That’s bullshit!” Clint exclaimed at the television. “How the hell do they just conveniently have a glitch that allows a former tech CEO to escape from prison?”

Natasha frowned at the television as her mind ran through everything that she remembered about Justin Hammer from her time undercover at Stark Industries.

“Tony isn’t the only tech company that worked with the military. Hammer’s did too,” Nat pointed out. “It isn’t too far of a stretch to think that he also had his fingers in the prison system too. While there’s more money to be made on defense contracts, for profit prisons also bring in a good amount of money and if he helped to design the security systems then he would know right where the weak points were if he could get his hands on a computer.”

Everyone stared at her for a minute as they connected the dots that she had just laid out for them. The picture that took shape was not a pretty one. If Hammer had left himself some backdoors in this one prison, then how many others might he have also placed? Was there anywhere that he could be locked up that wouldn’t risk him having already planted a way out? Was he the only one locked up that knew about the hacks or were there other potential breakouts just waiting to happen?

All of this was too much for Bruce to take as he added in his own two cents to the stupidity that was obviously going around.

“Wait a minute,” Bruce interjected. “You mean to tell me that not only did they allow someone with the knowledge of tech that Hammer has, though I do know that isn’t saying much, within five feet of a computer but they also did that in a facility in which he possibly designed the security system for. How stupid are some people? Hammer may not be good for much but what he is good for is having tech that fails at just the wrong moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if he put those glitches in himself just to be useful for him sometime in the future. He did break Vanko out of prison once too remember.”

Bucky growled and clenched his fists in anger at what had been done to Tony when he hadn’t been around to protect him. When he had first joined the Avengers he had looked into the background of each of the members and knew perfectly well who Hammer was. Now that he and Tony were in a relationship he liked what he had learned about the man that had threatened his boyfriend even less.

This was just another slight against the man that he loved and it burned Bucky inside to know that for right now Hammer was spitting in their face. It was attacking Tony that had gotten him put in jail and by orchestrating his own escape it was as though he was saying he could do as he pleased with no consequences and Bucky would be damned if there were no consequences for hurting the man he loved.

“We’ll find him,” Bucky swore. “We’ll find him and put in him some deep dark pit where he can never get out of. That’s if I leave anything behind when I’m done with him.”

Steve looked for a moment like he wanted to say something about being the good guys and not resorting to unnecessary violence but one look at Bucky’s face made him keep his comments to himself. It would do him no good right now and would just start a fight. There was no question that Steve wanted Hammer put away for good just as much as the rest of them did. Tony was his friend and the idea that there was someone out there that had already tried once to have Tony killed and might be doing the same thing right now sat sour on his tongue. That didn’t mean that he was going to lose his best friend to revenge along the way.

“We’ll find Hammer don’t you worry. Tony’s made it clear just how bad Hammer is with tech,” Steve said trying to lighten the mood as best as he could. “It’s only a matter of time until he messes up somewhere and we catch him.”

Both of the super soldiers looked over to where Tony was typing furiously at his laptop, giving JARVIS orders at the same time as he worked to hunt down Hammer’s location before he could disappear off the grid. While Hammer might have paled in comparison to Tony’s genius, he didn’t become the CEO of his own company for nothing. He was smart enough and he was driven by revenge and that made him dangerous. If he couldn’t manage his revenge on his own Hammer would seek out more people like Vanko to do that work for him and as much as Tony wished it were different, he knew that there were plenty of people out there that would take great pleasure in trying to destroy his life and who wouldn’t care about the collateral damage in the process.

Tony was brought out of those spiraling thoughts when two hands, one flesh and one mechanical settled on his shoulders and began making soothing rubbing motions to ease the tension that was forming.

“Don’t worry Doll,” Bucky whispered into Tony’s ear. “He won’t come close to you. He won’t get the chance. I promise.”

The side of Tony’s mouth curved up though his fingers never slowed down.

“You say that as though you think Iron Man needs protecting from some has been that can’t even make a bomb that goes boom,” Tony said thinking back to the missle that Rhodey had tried using back when Vanko attacked the exhibition.

“Not at all,” Bucky reassured. “Iron Man doesn’t need any help taking out some low level goon. Tony on the other hand, the strength behind Iron Man, isn’t so proud that he would turn away those that care about him and only want to see him safe. Will you really turn us away from you?”

Tony sighed, head bowed as he let Bucky’s words wash over him. At times when stress was great it was hard to remember that he wasn’t in this alone as he had spent much of his life. He had people on his side that were willing to fight to protect him even when he didn’t necessarily need anyone else’s protection.

Fingers slowing to a stop Tony turned around until he could curl himself into Bucky’s embrace and feel the strength from his boyfriend. It wasn’t that he didn’t think that he could handle this problem, it was more that he hadn’t thought he’d ever have to again. Tony had thought it was all settled and done with when Hammer was sentenced. Now it was like that had never happened and it was starting all over again. It was just so damn frustrating.

“This is what happens when you leave the bad guys alive instead of ending them when you have the chance,” Bucky grumbled halfheartedly as he rubbed Tony’s back.

Steve wanted to chastise his friend, mention how they were supposed to be the good guys and therefore didn’t go around killing people if there were any other options but couldn’t find it in himself to actually say anything. It wasn’t like Bucky was completely wrong. If Hammer had died in the fight at the Expo then he wouldn’t be posing a threat to another of his friends right now and Steve couldn’t honestly say that he’d rather have someone like Hammer alive at the expense of someone like Tony. They were just going to have to make sure that when they caught Hammer, and they would, he was put down in some deep, dark hole that he would never get out of again.


	2. Chapter 2

JARVIS ran facial recognition scans from security cameras in and around the prison that might have caught sight of Hammer as he made his escape just the day before. There wasn’t anything to see from the prison’s own security, odds being whatever Hammer had done to facilitate his escape had also wiped clean the cameras so as not to aid in his quick recapture. This meant that JARVIS was reduced attempting to catch sight of the criminal in a store or ATM camera, hoping that Hammer would make such a mistake.

Tony’d had a bit more success. With the permission of the local law enforcement he had gone into the prison’s security systems, purging everything that Hammer had done to them, patching holes, and making sure that nothing like this would happen again. To Hammer or to any other prisoner that might attempt such a feat in the future.

The rest of the Avengers hadn’t been sitting idly by either. Clint and Nat had spoken with contacts that they had to try and limit the area in which Hammer could travel and seek assistance and to receive reports if he tried to contact any of Tony’s other known enemies. Bruce was coordinating with the police and going through the tips that the public was sending in to separate the truth from the fantastical. Steve had taken to the streets to search himself for Hammer, feeling useless in the tower. Bucky had hardly left Tony’s side, doing so only to make sure that the genius was not running himself ragged in the whole process.

At the moment they were all at a stand still. Everything that could be done was being done. There was nothing more that any of them could do but wait and see what would turn up in the nets that they had cast. In the meantime life had to go on. There was work to be done and other people to protect from things beyond the capabilities of the regular police and armies. That didn’t mean that they forgot about the threat that Hammer posed however. It just meant that the search for him had to be balanced out against the other work they had going on such as the Avengers Alarm that was currently blaring, calling them all to arms.

“What’s the situation?” Bucky asked as everyone but Tony crowded onto the Quinjet.

The Iron Man suit took off from Tony’s landing pad as the jet made its way into the air. He would act as a scouting party for the rest of them to give everyone a good idea as to the layout and the best place for them to land and spread out from there.

“Apparently Doom has decided to take over the shipping containers down at the docks,” Steve reported as the followed behind in Tony’s wake. “We suspect that possibly there’s something that’s been shipped in recently that he’s trying to get his hands on.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Richards is getting into something that he shouldn’t be,” Tony complained out of habit as he began scanning the area for civilian movement versus where Doom was sending bots to wreak havoc to figure out the best ways of getting everyone out of danger as safely as possibly.

Tony was the first on the scene with the Quinjet only a minute behind him. There weren’t as many places to land it as they’d like but it would give Bruce a place from which to monitor the situation until they needed Hulk’s help which they would try to avoid in such a crowded area. He relayed all of that information to his teammates as he started another sweep of the area.

As soon as the Iron Man armor flew over the first of the docks Doom bots took to the sky and began attacking without warning or demands. Tony returned fire while JARVIS gave him feedback on the few civilians in the area that were now running for cover so that they could avoid the collateral damage from the fight.

Tony had already taken out half a dozen bots and was working his way through another handful when the rest of the team arrived to assist.

“Any word from Doom yet?” Steve asked as he sent his shield through a bot cutting it in half before turning to his next opponent.

“Not yet. Been too busy with his lackies to set up a playdate just yet,” Tony answered.

“Clint find a nest,” Steve ordered. “I want eyes on Doom. We can’t let ourselves get too distracted by the bots that we let him get away with whatever he’s after here.”

With that they all split up to accomplish their own jobs. The first priority was getting any civilian to safety followed by keeping Doom and his bots isolated into a contained area to minimize the destruction that they could cause. The problem with that was even without Doom being front and center in the fight there were more than enough Doom bots to make up for his absence. For every bot that they took down it seemed like four more took its place.

“Is it just me or are these Doom bots not up to the normal standard?” Clint asked as he sent another arrow to blast away a group sneaking up on Thor.

“Everyone be careful then. It might be a trap,” warned Steve.

He and Nat worked to evacuate the remaining civilians in the area into the Shield protection that was just arriving while Tony, Bucky, Clint, and Thor took down as many of the annoying robots as they could. While they weren’t particularly gifted bots there were a lot of them and their strength in numbers made up for lacking much else in skills.

“Tony,” Bruce’s voice sounded through the com link. “I think I found something that you might want to take a look at.”

Without having to ask JARVIS brought up the code that Bruce had been looking at on Tony’s HUD screen. It only took him a minute to see exactly what had caught Bruce’s attention.

“Son of a bitch. I think I know why the bots are such poor quality even for Doom,” Tony called out so everyone could hear him. “Hammer programed these things.”

“Hammer’s working with Doom?” Nat questioned. “I’m surprised Doom would sink so low to be honest.”

Bucky grunted as he ripped out the circuitry from one bot before using its casing to throw and take out two more. “I’m starting to think we might have gotten it wrong. Has anyone actually seen Doom anywhere around here because I haven’t. Who’s to say that Hammer didn’t just make the bots look like Doom’s in order to throw us off the scent and blame the attack on someone else.”

Bucky’s reasoning made twisted sense. By using Doom as a cover, Hammer could remain undetected while still drawing out the Avengers which would include Tony, therefore giving him a shot at taking out his rival. The fact that Doom himself hadn’t appeared to monologue about what his master plan was suspicious and the fact that the bots were nowhere near his usual standard gave more credence to Bucky’s theory.

“Doom! Did you seriously think that partnering up with Hammer would be a good idea?” Tony called out through his speakers trying to draw out the villain to defend himself from the insults as he flew through the sky, blasting Doom bots as he went. “Hammer’s work is sub par at best and you thought to yourself what, I’ve got to get me some of that action right there?”

Doom didn’t appear but more Doom bots flew at Tony trying to knock him out of the sky and stop him from trying to search out Hammer’s location. Tony had the advantage though. Hammer’s work was lacking, especially in comparison to Tony’s own, and now that they knew the source code of the bots Bruce was already getting some help from Nat to disable them through the backdoors that Hammer had inadvertently left in the coding.

Tony normally would have been all over that but right now his focus was more on finding where the wanna be tech genius was hiding and putting an end to all of this.

“Tony, I’ve located where the signal for the bots is coming from,” Bruce’s voice sounded through the comm link. “I’m sending the coordinates to you right now.”

A map of the city popped up on the HUD screen with a flashing red dot indicating where Hammer was hiding.

“I’ve got the location and I’m going after Hammer,” Tony relayed to the rest of the team.

“Copy that Iron Man,” Steve said. “We’ll take care of the Doom bots. Just don’t do anything stupid when you find Hammer Tony.”

“Can’t make any promises right now Cap,” Tony said, voice hard as he pushed his suit to go faster so Hammer wouldn’t have the chance to run off and hide starting the hunt for him all over again.

Landing outside the building Tony didn’t bother trying to hide his presence. The Iron Man suit wasn’t made for stealth missions and leaving it wouldn’t give him any tactical advantage at this point. With that knowledge Tony blasted down the door and marched inside. The building was a storage facility with an open layout so there weren’t too many places to hide to begin with. Using the thermal scanners Tony was able to move through the building quickly without having to waste time searching empty rooms to make sure Hammer wasn’t hiding himself in one of them.

Walking down the main hallway Tony scanned through each door that he passed until he came across a broom closet with a heat signature that indicated there was a hunched over person inside. Making sure that none of his weapons were exposed, not wanting to frighten a potential worker that was just trying to hide from the fight going on outside, Tony took hold of the door handle and yanked the door open in one quick motion.

Inside the closet wasn’t a worker doing their best not to get caught in the crossfire. It was Hammer crunched down behind a mop bucket as though that would somehow shield him from the retribution that he had coming to him.

With a whimper Hammer was hauled out of the broom closet that he was hiding in none too gently by the collar of his shirt and dragged outside, unable to fight the Iron Man suit’s strength, where Shield could pick him up and take him into custody. There had been discussions about handing him back over to the regular police now that Tony had fixed the security systems that had been holding Hammer but Steve had argued that since Hammer had specifically gone after a member of the Avengers that Shield, and all of the might behind it, should be the ones that got to take responsibility of Hammer to make sure that he never escaped again.

Tony hadn’t put up too much of a fight with that, merely making sure that Shield knew if they tried using Hammer to build for them that he no longer would. The looks of disgust that he had gotten and the comments that if Shield was stupid enough to use Hammer then they deserved not to have access to Tony any longer made a feeling of warmth curl in his chest. That was enough to settle Tony and he happily handed the disgraced tech mogul over without a second thought.

Just because Tony had washed his hands of Hammer didn’t mean that everyone else was done with him too. Pulling of his face mask, Bucky stalked over to where Hammer was being loaded up into one of the Shield vans on scene and grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt with his metal arm and spun him around.

Before the Shield agents had a chance to see what was going on or Hammer had a chance to reorient himself, Bucky’s flesh hand came flying out and struck Hammer right in the nose, breaking it and sending the man to his knees in a blubbering mess as he clutched at his face. Bucky started down at him in satisfaction at the broken and bloody nose left behind knowing that it was just a small price for the man to pay for all of the terrorizing of his boyfriend that he had done.

“That’s for coming after my boyfriend,” Bucky growled into Hammer’s whimpering face. “Do it again and I’ll make that seem like a token of my love and affection. Are we clear?”

Hammer nodded his head quickly not wanting to face anymore of the wrath of the Winter Soldier and all but pushed himself further into the hands of the agents in charge of taking him away. Bucky just stared him down until the vehicle was pulling away and turning the corner out of sight.

Tony snorted in amusement before disengaging the armor around him and stepping out, sending it to wait by the Quinjet for him. Smiling widely he walked up to Bucky’s side and looped one arm around Bucky’s waist.

“Thanks for that but you really didn’t have to punch him in the face. Not saying it wasn’t amazing to watch but you didn’t need to defend my honor like that,” Tony said, face pinched to try and hold back more laughs that wanted to come out at Hammer’s expense.

“You’re wrong Doll. I did have to. He came after what’s mine and I don’t take too kindly to that,” Bucky replied, face serious but eyes crinkling up at the edges showing his own amusement.

“I’m yours now am I?” Tony asked with an arched eyebrow. “I supposed I could live with that. At least you used your normal hand instead of the metal one so Steve can’t be too mad about it.”

“Please,” Bucky said with a roll of his eyes, “Steve will just be grateful that I didn’t murder the guy like I had planned.”

Tony tripped over his feet as they walked back to the rest of the Avengers at that new piece of information. “Please tell me you mean that as a joke. You didn’t actually have plans to kill him did you right?”

Bucky grinned, showing far too many teeth to be reassuring. “Nothing anyone can prove anyway.”

Tony just shook his head and kept walking. He couldn’t say that he would have done anything differently if it had been some bad guy threatening Bucky so he didn’t really have any room to make any complaints. It was also kind of nice that someone would go to that trouble just to protect him even when he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. All in all, not a bad battle and he was looking forward to getting home to show Bucky just how much he appreciated the show of support. Hammer might still not be dead but by the time Shield got done with him he was going to wish that he was.


End file.
